


Discomfort

by infinitumetultra



Series: Chop and Change [2]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Banter, Companionable Snark, Darcy Lewis Smut Week, F/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Relationship, an incident with a spider, characters getting comfortable with each other, drastic mood changes, mentions of Jane Foster and Nick Fury, no avengers yet, no smut yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 04:25:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinitumetultra/pseuds/infinitumetultra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil isn’t comfortable with his doctor’s conditions for him to leave the hospital and neither is Darcy. Luckily they are both very adaptable people with very good chemistry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Discomfort

**Author's Note:**

> Notes: Written for the Darcy Lewis Smut Week Challenge (AGAIN WITH NO SMUT WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS) for the prompt: Vampire. I really struggled with this one, as far as the whole prompting goes… but I think I made it work. Also, I’m a little concerned about Phil being OOC in this particular fic. I dunno. Anyway…

After three long months of that dreadful hospital room, Phil was finally allowed to leave for home. He had to essentially sneak out, seeing as nearly everyone still thought he was dead, but he was home. The doctors insisted Darcy come with him for safety’s sake, and he found that to be excessive. He was doing his physical therapy, he was getting his stamina back and the pain was becoming bearable. As far as he was concerned, from then on out he could do without anyone hovering over him. But he wanted to get back into the field and he couldn’t do that until he had clearings from the medical division, the psych division and Fury himself. He didn’t want to risk any kind of drawbacks, and grudgingly agreed.

It was out of his comfort zone, not that he didn’t like his assistant but she was being so completely immersed in his life. He did like Darcy; she was smart, capable and even entertaining but this was his space. Going home was such a rare event for Phil in the first place, having someone else there with him would take getting used to. He tried to look on the bright side of it. The company was nice, he reminded himself, especially after waking up alone in a hospital room when he was certain the last time he was conscious that he was going to die.

Fury had shown up after the doctors explained what happened, and his boss would have been comforting presence had it not been revealed that the rest of the world thought that he was, indeed, dead. That was going to be hell to recover from, he knew why Fury had done it but it was going to be an absolute nightmare to make right. It also felt wrong. It was a huge lie, an effective one if the results of the Battle of New York testified for anything, but still egregious.

And to top it all off the Director besmirched his beloved, vintage, Captain America Trading Cards.

“Um, Boss?”

Phil turned from staring blankly inside the fridge (which was empty save for a few water bottles and cans of soda) to find Darcy fidgeting in his kitchen. “Everything alright?”

“Yeah? No…” She winced. “Okay, I have a question but you have to promise it won’t in any way alter your opinion of me and my capabilities as an almost Agent.”

“What’s the problem, Lewis?” Phil practically sighed.

“You have to promise!”

Phil wanted to rub his temple and frown. But he had to be Agent Coulson, because Darcy was here. In his house. Where he wanted to be Phil for five damn seconds. “Agent Lewis —”

“Junior.” Darcy blurted.

“Junior Agent Lewis.” Coulson had to fight not to grind his teeth. “What is the problem?”

Darcy blinked at him a few times, like she was uncertain whether her question was safe to ask. “Um… You know what? I think I’ll figure it out for myself. You go back to contemplating the vast nothingness of your fridge.”

As she turned to walk away, Phil sighed. “Lewis.”

“Yeah?”

“I promise your question won’t alter my opinion of you or your capabilities as an agent.”

“Almost Agent.”

Phil didn’t trust himself to say anything cordial, so he quietly waited.

Darcy waited too, until his eye twitched. And not in the ‘that was marginally amusing’ way that she had picked up on. It was closer to: ‘there are over six thousand ways for me to kill you and I’m imagining all of them.’ She swallowed. “Right. So. The shower… in the guest bathroom? There’s a spider in it. I don’t do spiders, okay? I can’t do it.”

Phil stared at her relentlessly for a few tense seconds, blinked once and then laughed.

“Oh, sweet lord,” Darcy threw up her hands in surrender. “You’ve cracked. I did it. I broke Agent Coulson. Please don’t kill me… Or you know what? Go ahead. Whatever it is you have prepared has got to be ten times better than whatever Fury can dish out for breaking his favourite Agent.” Darcy tensed and clenched her eyes shut, waiting.

Phil simply walked past her and she risked opening an eye, watching him go. He was still chuckling.

“Are you going to get your ice pick or something?” She called after him.

“An ice pick is a bit excessive for a spider, don’t you think?”

“Right,” she slowly made her way to the guest bedroom just as Phil was exiting the bathroom. “Is it gone?”

“Yes.”

“Did you booby trap the shower?”

“I was in the bathroom for ten seconds…” He just barely frowned at her.

“Hey, I’m not gonna die because I doubted your speedy ninja prowess,” she retorted.

“No. I did not booby trap the shower.”

“Okay. Cool. Thank you!”

“You’re welcome.”

Darcy Lewis tazed a Norse God who was roughly twice her size, didn’t freeze up when faced with the Destroyer but will absolutely not have anything to do with spiders. Phil snorted before going back to making sure that the house was all in the right order. Which it was. So he called for a pizza. Orders from the doctors be damned, there was nothing in the house and he hadn’t complained once about the terrible food they served him in the hospital. Except the jello. Sitting down on the couch with the files Darcy had brought over, he managed to be somewhat productive before the pizza arrived.

Eventually Darcy wandered out, and sat down at the table with him. Sharing food had, surprisingly, become normal for them now. She wasn’t lying when she said boundaries were her mortal enemies. It was quiet for a while between them, and Phil was waiting for her to break the silence. When she didn’t he realized he wasn’t the only one being pushed to their limit with the current state of things. He watched as she peeled the pepperoni off of her pizza and gently reached over to put them on his plate.

“Any other spider related incidents in the shower?”

The glare she shot him was playful. “No.”

“That’s good,” a small smile played at his lips.

“You promised!” She protested.

“I promised my opinion of you wouldn’t change and I wouldn’t doubt your capabilities.” Phil said. “I never promised not to mock you.”

“You shady undercover secret agent men and your loopholes,” she grumbled.

“Welcome to the Club.”

“You don’t even have jackets.”

“We have jumpsuits.”

“Jackets are cooler.”

Phil breathed a short laugh and went back to his pizza.

Darcy poked at her pizza a little before she spoke again. “I’m sorry I have to crash in on your personal life.”

“There’s not much of a personal life to crash into.” He responded after chewing and swallowing.

“Okay, but I’m still in your house.” Darcy said.

“Doctors give orders for a reason.”

Darcy shrugged, and then frowned and looked up at him. “Did you take your pain meds?”

“Yes.”

“You gotta take them with food or else… You know,” she made a gagging sound.

“Thank you, for that.”

“Anytime.” She grinned. “We gotta go grocery shopping at some point. All the places that deliver are loaded with MSG and other murderous, yet tasty, things.”

“Anything else, Dr. Lewis?” Phil asked wryly.

“Hey,” she pointed at him, but she was smirking, “my job is to make sure you take care of yourself.”

“There’s a boundary between looking out for someone and becoming their mother.”

“It could be worse, I could sit and watch obsessively while you sleep.” Darcy said. “Go all Edward Cullen on you. Sparkling in the sun and everything.”

“Watching someone sleep is not that creepy,” Phil said slightly defensive.

Darcy scoffed at him. “It’s pretty creepy, man. It’s up there with saving toe nail clippings.”

“I disagree,” Phil said plainly.

“You’re totally a creeper like that, aren’t you?” Darcy seemed all too excited by this revelation and Phil was ready to put a stop to it. “Do you build busts made of the chewed bubblegum of your beloved too?” She looked around, “come on, where’s the secret shrine? Who is it dedicated to? Is it Fury?”

“It’s not Fury,” Phil said calmly, “and there is no shrine.”

Darcy narrowed her eyes at him. “Who is it?”

“Lewis.”

“Coulson.”

“There isn’t —”

“You’re way too defensive about this.”

“As your boss —”

“Don’t pull rank on me now, Phillip James Coulson, I’ve let you bully me into tortuous training that, by the way, teaches me how to kill people which is something I’m totally not comfortable with – you are not boss-ing me into dropping this.” Darcy said in a flurry of righteous indignation before she deflated. “And ignore that I just tried to pull the full name on you.”

Phil recovered from that outburst, decided not to comment on the use of his full name (this time) and sighed, leaning back in his chair. “You don’t have the clearance for me to tell you —”

“Buddy, any rules about clearance flew out the window when I was privy to the level 700 secret that you, good ol’ Agent iPod Thief, are in fact alive and almost well.”

“We should keep from breaking any more of those rules.”

“There are exceptions to every rule, Coulson, and I am always the exception. Fess up.”

They engaged in a momentary stare off before Phil sighed resignedly. “I’m a big Captain America fan,” he began stoically, “and there may have been an incident where he was frozen and preserved in ice for seventy years and I might have momentarily been in charge of overseeing his resting while he recovered from the ice.”

Darcy bit her lip to keep from laughing and absorbed that story. “Where’s the shrine?”

“There isn’t a shrine.” His eye twitched in the ‘this is marginally amusing’ way. A tiny linger of crinkling at his eyes like he was about to smile but got a hold of himself.

“It’s fine, I’ll find it eventually.”

“How Dr. Foster managed to stay sane with you as her assistant, I’ll never know.” Phil shot back.

“Oh, Boss Man, Jane is a lot of things but sane isn’t one of them.”

“An inevitable result of exposure to your brand of mockery, probably.” He said.

Darcy smiled sweetly. “Now you sound like my mother.”

“Your mother can’t fire you, I can.” Phil deemed fit to remind her as they began cleaning up dinner.

“If you fire me, you have to find someone else to come live in your house while you fully recover or go back to that hospital room,” Darcy said. “And I’ll probably be murdered and no one would ever find the body…” she turned to him, “so… you know… please don’t.”

“Since you asked so nicely.”

The next morning Darcy left to actually attend training and pick up more assignments, but by lunch time she returned with groceries. Phil got started on work while she made them lunch. It was sort of an unspoken agreement that neither of them were comfortable with the new living arrangements. Phil would manage, discomfort was something he was very accustomed to, and Darcy seemed to make herself comfortable regardless of any situation. He figured a routine would get itself embedded eventually and they would adapt. She was casual enough that he could easily let the Agent Coulson facade slip a little, and she would have to leave to do his errands and finish up her qualifications – so they’d get time away from each other. It could have been worse, he reminded himself, at least Darcy Lewis made him laugh.


End file.
